


Watch me be the loyalest of all

by charons_boat



Series: Curses Upon the Innocent [3]
Category: EXO (Band), TXT (Korea Band), 방탄소년단 | Bangtan Boys | BTS
Genre: Blood, CatHybrid!Beomgyu, CatHybrid!Soobin, CatHybrid!Taehyun, Death, Deer, DeerHybrid!Luhan, Fighting, Gifts, HAO!San, Harm, Healing, Horns, Hybrids, Intentions, Leaving, Lost Time, Luhan is old as hell, M/M, Murder, Muted Emotions, Pain, Police, Scars, Symbols, Wards, Weakness, Witch!Yixing, Witches, abuse-esque harming, burial, extinct deer, glass, glass shards, hybrid abuse officer, walking on glass, ward amulets, ward making, witch!yoongi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:13:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21595918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charons_boat/pseuds/charons_boat
Summary: Soobin never felt very much, except for pain. Well, that's what he thought. When he realized he could feel other thing strongly as well, it was too late, and he was gone.
Relationships: Choi Soobin/Lu Han
Series: Curses Upon the Innocent [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1542079
Comments: 9
Kudos: 8





	1. follow you in circles (and no that is not a joke)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!! The third part is here, please enjoy Soobin!! Happy Thanksgiving!!
> 
> Also, please note that this part contains mentions of harm that could be considered abuse and is by outsiders, as well as self-harm and suicidal thoughts and actions.

I was born in Norway. I was a brown and grey Norwegian forest cat, one of the biggest cat breeds. I was mostly brown, with a grey patch on my right ear. My fur was thick and fluffy, and I lived with these odd-smelling people. Though I was born in Norway, my people were from Korea; they were just visiting Norway when I was born, and they took my mother with them.

When I was somewhere close to a year old, the youngest of my people put a curse on me. It muted emotions, and right from the start, I never felt very much.

There wasn't much anger directed towards the 11 year old boy who cursed me, and there was barely enough fear to make me run away, into the streets of Seoul. When I saw something pretty, I felt a fleeting moment of appreciation. There was just a tidbit of gratitude when someone gave me food. I didn't even feel 'sad' or 'happy' or 'love' or 'hate' for a good few years.

It was less hatred for witches that kept me away from them, and more that I just didn't care enough to make an effort to get to know any of them. None of them made me feel enough; I was waiting for something really strong to pull towards someone.

Sometimes, when I was wandering, I read signs. It took me a good long while to learn how to decipher the strange symbols the humans used, most of which I spent sitting in classroom windowsills where kids were trying to learn like I was. The time I spent learning at school was how I knew I was in a place called Daegu.

Daegu was a place I'd been before, a few years before I could read. It had gotten bigger, and the scent of magic pervaded the air here in a way I hadn't experienced yet. To me, Daegu didn't seem like a place that would have a lot of witches. Seoul seemed more like the type of place witches would live, but I'd found very few of them in the large city.

The first witch that made me feel anything in Daegu was named Ahn Yangbin. He was tall, nearly six foot, and he wore glasses. He had a lot of piercings, which held blue jewelry that matched his dyed hair. Yangbin showed me what true pain was, and that was why he drew me in.

I met Yangbin in a park. The first time I saw him, he was just sitting on a bench, little animals gathered around him. I padded closer on the branch I was standing on until I was right over him, and I watched him. He had a little bird in his hands, and he was messing around with it's wings. He ran light fingers over the fragile bones, seeming to map them out.

It was almost hypnotic to watch his fingers moving. I didn't feel myself falling into a trance-like state, I just felt like I was falling asleep. And then I heard a snap, and felt pain in my tail, and my eyes snapped open. I was somehow in the man's lap, and his hands were on my tail. And as I stared at the kink in my tail, at the section of my tail hanging limp, I felt pain flood through me. For the first time, I felt something really strong. Yes, it hurt; it also drew me in, because it was just so _strong_. I'd never felt anything like it. My own pain enamored me.

I let him take me to his house. When he asked me to turn into a human, I did, because I was curious. There was a saying about cats and curiosity. _Curiosity killed the cat._ Most people often omitted the last part of it, _but satisfaction brought it back._ In my case, curiosity led to me making many questionable decisions, and satisfaction kept me there throughout my pain.

When I went human, he gave me sweatpants. I let him run his hand over my tail. It was longer in my human form, but just as fluffy. It still hadn't healed from being broken earlier in the day, and a twinge of pain went up my spine when he ran his hand over the break again. I enjoyed his gentle fingers on my tail almost as much as I enjoyed letting him do what he wanted. I heard a snap and felt another wave of pain as he broke my tail again. I shivered at the feeling, and leaned into the hand he ran through my hair.

I let him break my tail often, and I let him run knives through my cat ears. Sometimes he'd want to cut my hair off, and I let him even though it always ended up choppy and uneven. Other times he'd want to break my ribs with his magic, or make dozens of little cuts on my skin, and still I let him. Because I felt ever so slightly happy to feel something strongly for once.

He always explained to me afterwards that he didn't really want to hurt me, but he understood how I felt. He was also cursed with muted emotions, and like me, he found solace in the pain, the only thing that wasn't felt quietly and in passing. He said that even though it harmed me, he knew how it felt, and he knew how it helped.

He didn't always hurt me. He mentioned one day that he was a ward witch, one of the best because his emotions never got in the way. It was more of a passing comment, but it interested me like pain did, and I asked him to explain it. He said that wards didn't really need magic, they just needed objects and intentions. He showed me how to make wards by making me a necklace.

I watched him make my necklace. The first thing he did was gather up a bunch of materials; a black leather string, a spool of silver, a tiger's eye gem he said looked like my eyes. He hummed a quiet song as he wound the metal around the rock in an intricate pattern, leaving enough for a hoop on the top. He stopped humming to explain that there were certain shapes that could make wards stronger, and he showed me the one he'd put on the back of the stone. He started humming again as he threaded the leather through the hoop and tied it into a really special and difficult knot.

And then he gave me the necklace, and said it would protect me from bad things. After I put it on, it always stayed on me, and it no longer hurt me to change into a human around him.

From then on, he let me help him make wards. Like him, I was really good at it. Once I got as good as him, which took nearly as long to learn as reading had, he actually sold some of my wards to people, and charged them more because I made them and they were special. He said mine were more powerful, even stronger than his, because my intent was pure and I instinctively knew what symbols to weave before I even thought to include them.

I spent years working on a ward amulet for him, to protect him from magic directed at him. It started when I found this sapphire in a collapsed house we visited during winter. It was the perfect shade of blue, only slightly darker than his hair, and it was just perfectly transparent. It wasn't very big, maybe about an inch in diameter. When I found the blackened steel in the burnt down mansion, I started weaving a layer of symbols around the middle, leaving a window at the middle so he could see through it. I wove another ring of metal around it after I found the blessed iron abandoned in the church. The third ring was red gold, found deep in a cave, and it held so many symbols by this point that it practically radiated protection. No matter what angle you looked at it from, there were at least three protective symbols in sight. Some parts of the weaving even combined with the layers underneath to make more complex symbols.

The last thing I needed was a string to put it on. It would be a necklace, like the first one he'd given me, but I just couldn't find something that fit him. And then, we went to a store in the mall, and I saw chokers for the first time. I asked him to get some, so he could wear them around, and he did. I took a black one that was just a shiny ribbon around his neck, and I slowly wove pieces of metal onto it, around from the back side to the front. And when the two ends finally met, I threaded the ward amulet onto it and twisted the loose wires around each other to keep them in place.

And the morning I woke up planning to give it to him, he was missing from the bed. I heard shouting from the living room, so I grabbed the box it was in from under the bed and dashed into the room we spent so much time in. The first thing I saw was the blood spattered on the walls, and the next thing I saw was him. He was barely staying up on his feet, and blood was dripping down his fingers. Another man, another _witch_ , was standing in front of him. As I watched, the other witch cast a spell towards him, and Yangbin fell to the floor.

The other witch had a satisfied smile on his face as he looked around. He saw me, and he rolled his eyes and walked over. He stopped a few feet short of me and looked me over. His face morphed into shock as he took in my shredded ears, my kinked up tail, my countless scars. He covered his mouth, in something akin to horror.

"What happened to you," he asked softly. A tear rolled down my face.

"You killed my owner," I whispered. He scoffed in disgust.

"Your owner? Please, he was barely someone who could be considered an owner. Is he the one who did this to you," the strange witch asked. I nodded. "That's why he wasn't really your owner. Anyone who could do this disgusts me." I growled at him.

"What's your name? Who do you think you are to disregard his actions like that," I half-shouted at him. He just stared at me, confusion showing on his face. He ran his hand through red and black hair, and answered me when it fell back into place.

"Choi San, Hybrid Abuse Officer," he said.

"Do you even know how he helped me, Choi San," I asked.

"There is _literally_ no way he could have helped you by doing this to you," the man said. He sounded so sure of himself, I almost laughed in his face.

"My curse is muted emotions. Pain is the only thing I can feel clearly. If it didn't bother me or upset me when he hurt me, then why should anyone else care? Why would you come here and kill him?! I was going to give him a gift today! I've been working on it for years, and I was going to give it to him today, and you just killed him for something I wanted," I yelled at him. I dropped the box, heard the choker clatter out onto the floor, and ignored it as I launched myself at him.

I killed Choi San, threw his bloody body out on the street after I put the choker back into the box and set it on the coffee table. I sat next to Yangbin's body, cold now, and pulled his head into my lap. I cried as I ran my hand through his bloody hair, cried as I kissed his bloody fingers that had dealt me so much pain. I wrapped my kinked-up tail around his wrist, and thought that this was true sadness, and it just felt like a different kind of pain.

The next morning, I buried him in the backyard, and I left Daegu with a pair of his sweatpants and one of his hoodies on, and the box he never got to open resting inside the pocket. The box was always there whenever I changed from a cat into a human, even on the days I somewhat wished it would disappear and stop reminding me of him.

I wasn't sure how long I'd been away from Daegu when I finally came back. When I walked into Daegu for the first time that year, there was a different smell in the air, something that hadn't been there the last time I came. There was this strange, slightly sour something tainting the air. I wasn't sure what it was, and I wasn't sure I liked it. But I kept walking on the side of the big, paved road, barefoot as I'd been for years, in ratty old sweatpants with a stained, ripped hoodie covering my torso. My hands were mindlessly playing with the worn edges of the box in my pocket. The hood was down and my tail was out, exposing what I was to the city.

I'd decided I couldn't handle the nothingness anymore. I couldn't handle hurting myself in an attempt to feel something. I couldn't handle my memories, and I just wanted someone who hated hybrids to come and kill me. But no one did, and I ended up leaving Daegu again. It hurt to see the changes that had been made to his house. It hurt to watch the children who now lived there run around in the yard. It hurt to imagine that maybe they were stomping all over his grave.

Daegu was something like a magnet to me. Because even though I tried to stay away, even though I tried to just roam around the forests and fields and little towns, I always found myself prowling the outskirts of the city, staring in towards the center and running off whenever I felt the pull too strongly.

And when I walked into Daegu for the second time that year, the strange, slightly sour smell was gone from the air. Like the last time I'd come to the city, my hood was down, and my tail was out, and I was walking the hot, black pavement with bare feet. I was waiting for someone to hit me with something, to run me over, to curse me as a freak. In a city with so many witches, I should have realized I wouldn't get what I wanted.

What I got instead was a group of three people. A witch with mint green hair, a tall man with black hair and a hat over his head, and a small blond boy with a beanie on. I was walking in the parking lots, stepping over broken glass and being very disappointed with the way the glass grinding into my flesh was failing to hurt me. The little blond one saw me first, with my shredded ears and jacked up tail, worn clothes and old ward necklace. He pointed me out to the others, and they walked over with a look of alarm on their faces.

"Hi there! What are you doing walking around barefoot," the little boy asked. Now that he was closer, I could see that he wasn't a child, he was just small.

"Trying to feel something. What are you doing making so much noise," I bit back. He kept smiling though.

"It's something that helps me focus. I've got a hyperactivity curse," he said, bouncing on his heels and making more noise.

"Yeah, cool. Can't care, don't care, wouldn't care. Just leave me alone," I said. He shook his head. Before he could speak, a voice in my head cut him off.

 _"Don't be rude to Beomgyu. He's just trying to be nice,"_ the voice said. I glared at them.

"Who was that," I asked quietly. The tall one raised his hand, and the voice was in his head again.

 _"Me. My name is Taehyun. I've got a muting curse, so I have to use a bracelet that's been enchanted. It's what lets me do this,"_ the man said. I stared at them.

"Why are you guys talking to me," I asked. The witch finally spoke.

"You looked like you needed help," he said, his gaze switching between my ears, the scars on my face, and my tail. I scowled.

"Just because I'm scarred up and broken doesn't mean I need help. Do you have any idea what it's like to feel nearly nothing unless someone is hurting you? Have you got any clue what it's like to watch your owner die because someone reported him to the police for abusing you, when you were just fine with what he was doing, when you _wanted_ it? Because if you don't, then don't tell me he abused me. Don't tell me I need help if you don't understand," I said bitterly. The little one stepped closer to me.

"Can I feel your tail? And your ears? They look interesting," he said. I frowned, somewhat confused, but kneeled down anyways. The glass ground into the bones of my feet as I went lower so he could reach my ears. He ran little fingers over the ragged edges of my cat ears. "Oh, this one has grey on it!" It made me smile just a little. And then he started talking to me quietly.

"You know, I don't understand your feelings. But I know what it's like to have my owners die. I had two witches, and Yoongi says they were married. Park Chanyeol and Park Baekhyun. They practically raised me, because they found me really young, and they were just…they were perfect for me. One day, they said they had to go do something dangerous, and I couldn't come. But they told me they were coming back. They promised they'd come back, and a few years before that, they'd promised me they'd never die and that we'd live together forever. They left me with Yoongi on the promise that they'd be back in a month tops. Two and a half months later, a letter came saying they'd died. I never said goodbye to them, because I don't focus well and I was talking to Taehyun when they left. I don't understand your feelings, but I understand losing people," he said quietly.

"I didn't get to say goodbye either. I was going to give him a present, something I'd worked on for years, and the morning I was going to do it, a Hybrid Abuse Officer came and killed him. What's funny is that he was killed by magic, and I was going to give him a ward to protect him from magic. If I'd just found that box a day earlier, he'd still be alive," I said quietly. He ran his little hands over the bumps and turns of my tail.

"It's all kinked up," he giggled softly. I nodded.

"Like a garden hose," I said.


	2. (but) oh my gawd, what is this new emotion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was so much easier than he thought it would be to settle into a new place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!! Soobin's section was really short, but the next two make up for it!! Might be a new surprise later today 👀
> 
> Edit: so I lied I'll post more tomorrow. Consider it one update set pls, so I can update again later in the week 👀

I ended up going home with Yoongi. Beomgyu shifted into his cat, literally the smallest full grown cat I'd ever seen in my life, and sat in my lap on the ride back. When we arrived at an old house that felt like Taehyun, the tall hybrid carried me inside while Yoongi called someone named Yixing. He was apparently really good at healing magic, and he had a deer hybrid named Lu with him when he popped up in front of the fire a few minutes later. He took one look at me and asked Taehyun to carry me to another room. 

"Hello, my name is Zhang Yixing, and this is Lu, my hybrid. I can heal you, and if you want, I could probably fix your scars," he said. I shook my head.

"No, leave them alone. Just my feet. Only fix my feet," I said. He furrowed his brows.

"You want your ears and tail to look like this," he asked. I nodded.

"Of course. Why wouldn't I? This isn't from abuse," I said. He continued with the healing he'd started without me noticing while he talked to me.

"It's not? It really looks like it," he said, sounding incredulous.

"You don't know the situation, so I don't blame you for thinking like that. But it only counts as abuse if I didn't want it to happen," I said quietly. He didn't talk to me after that, though his hybrid did. 

"My name's Lu. It's nice to meet you. What kind of cat are you, it's hard to tell when you're human," the deer said. I smiled.

"I'm glad to meet you, Lu. My name is Soobin. I'm a Norwegian forest cat. It's one of the biggest types of cats," I said, feeling just a little proud. Then I got an idea while I was looking at his horns. I thought of a question. "What kind of deer are you?" He smiled. 

"I'm a milu deer, also called a Pere David's deer. They're extinct in the wild now, but they weren't when I was cursed. I'm a pretty old hybrid, I'm older than Yixing actually," he said, blushing and rubbing his nape. 

"How old are you, if you don't mind me asking. And what's your curse, if you don't mind that either," I asked. 

"Ah, well, I was born during the Tang dynasty in China, somewhere around 754? It gets a little blurry. There weren't many witches back then, and it was a long time before I met Yixing, who explained my curse to me. It's a uh…well shoot, I forgot again," he pouted. 

"It's a weakness curse, Lu," Yixing murmured. Lu got this expression on his face and he smiled.

"Right! Weakness curse. I'm not very strong, and I'm really emotional, and I get sick and hurt really easily. Sometimes I just wake up bruised because I slept weird. But since Yixing is a healer, he helps to keep me from getting really sick," Lu said. I nodded, glad he had someone so good for him. I was surprised he was that old. It had been…1,265 years since 754. He said it was blurry, so he could be even a bit older. 

"Hey, Soobin. What's your curse," Lu asked after a few moments of silence.

"Muted emotions," I said. He nodded. 

"That explains all your scars," he said. I looked at him, faintly surprised. 

"It does," I asked. He nodded again.

"Hybrids, even witches and humans, with that curse often end up scarred like this. Is your owner the one who did this," Lu asked. I nodded. 

"Yeah. He said he also had this curse, and the pain helped him. He is the one who kinked up my tail and shredded my ears, and scarred up my face and body like this. But, like him, the pain helped me. It's really the only thing I can feel clearly, and it almost…feels nice in a way. I know it sounds weird and wrong, but I enjoyed spending time with someone who hurt me, maimed me. He taught me how to make wards," I said. I slowly closed my fingers around the box in my pocket. I pulled it out and set it beside me, letting Lu see the worn edges and faded colors. I wasn't even sure how old the box was anymore.

"I made the ward amulet in that box for him, but he was killed before I could give it to him. I haven't…this box hasn't been opened since I left his house," I said quietly. Lu pulled the box towards him and set it in his lap before looking at me.

"Can I see," he asked. I nodded, and he opened the box with careful fingers. He pulled the choker out of the tissue paper and examined it, looking first over every piece of metal woven onto the black ribbon. Then he looked at the spherical sapphire and the metal rings woven around it, going over every angle he could find. He finally set it back in the box and put the lid back on, putting it by my side. 

"That's beautiful. What is it for," he asked. I smiled and pulled the box into my lap, running my fingers over the light blue stripes on the white box. 

"It's a protection ward amulet. It was supposed to protect him from magic. I put as many symbols into it as I could manage," I said.

"Symbols," Lu asked. I nodded. 

"Symbols. Shapes used in wards to make them stronger. Those shapes that caught your eye while you were looking at it were symbols. Would you like to see a few of them? I can point them out and explain them," I offered. He smiled gratefully and nodded, sitting next to me. I reopened the box and ran my fingers over the weaving before pulling it out. I pointed to a few of them on the choker. 

"This one means 'dark', and this one means 'defend'. When you overlap them like this, it can mean 'defense against the darkness', or 'defend me with darkness'. The meaning changes depending on the intent of the maker. If I went with the second one, it would gather dark magic to protect the wearer. I intended the first though. This one here is 'strength', this is 'love', and this is 'defend' again. They mean 'defend with the strength of my love'. I didn't realize it then, but love was the only other thing I felt really strongly. And then when you look at certain places around the sapphire, the layers of metal make symbols. Like this one, 'ultimate protection'. It's the strongest defense symbol there is, and the only way to make it is with layers like this. And it's really difficult to pull off with the right intentions," I said, resting my finger just below the symbol I was describing. 

"You mentioned intentions a few times. Why is that," Lu asked. 

"Making wards is a few parts. The materials used in ward making are important. The places you find them are significant, and your personal attachment can matter too. Sometimes you just see something that's perfect for what you're working on, because it has just the right aura or it was in the perfect place, and you just have to grab it before you lose sight of it. Symbols are another important part, and intentions are linked into symbols. Yeah, symbols make wards stronger, but your intentions while making them are what matter most. Your intentions can completely shift the direction of your ward amulet, which is why you've gotta have clear emotions while weaving wards. Yangbin and I were so good at it because we were cursed with muted emotions. Yeah, sometimes feeling strongly can help, especially if it's a gift for someone, but it can also put the wrong…ah what's the word? Your emotions can kind of corrupt your wards, I suppose. Materials form the ward, symbols strengthen it, and intentions make or break it," I said. When I looked up from the choker, Lu was staring at me. 

"That's really cool. It's so awesome you can do this," Lu said. I blushed a little and turned away. His eyes were really brown, and really cute, and they were just a bit too sparkly right then.

**Author's Note:**

> [CuriousCat](https://curiouscat.me/catfacekathryn)
> 
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/catfacekathryn?s=09)
> 
> Come find me here, I love talking about my work!! Feel free to write works inspired by this universe and tell me so I can try and promote them!!


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